


This Repeated Image

by snufflesfoot



Series: Drabbles (aka My Tears) [16]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Era, M/M, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:19:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snufflesfoot/pseuds/snufflesfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is their story, their curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Repeated Image

This is a story of two boys.   
  
No, wait.  
  
This is a story of friends: oh yes, the very best of friends, like summer and ice cream, can't have one without the other.  
  
Or. Or maybe --  
  
A story of the desperately beautiful. Or was it the beautifully desperate. Or was it both.  
  
But --  
  
This is the story of the lover, wracked and destroyed. Like summer and scraped knees. Can't have one without the other.  
  
And yes. Yes, it was both.

  
  
//

  
  
People said (even before it was real, they said it. Or maybe it was always real.) that they were two sides of the same coin.  
  
When they were young, they frowned, confused. Old people are weird, they told each other, and went off to fell monsters.  
  
Later, they understand. They understand and they are terrified and trembling because they don't understand no, not at all.   
  
Because can anyone truly comprehend the way they say each other's names like a prayer. The way they map each other's bodies with their fingertips like it's their pilgrimage. The way they look at each other like it's the only way to absolution and lord, how they sinned.

  
  
//

  
  
Two sides of the same coin.  
  
Flip a coin; it lands on a side.  
  
_(The other side must feel so alone.)_  
  
And that is their story, their curse, spanning the ages eternal.  
  
Each born decades apart, or born in the same time, but leagues away. Never meeting.  
  
But once in great while, the stars align just so and that coin lands on its edge, just perfectly precarious enough to allow the lovers to come together once more for one holy second in the endless heaving of fate.   
  
And be torn apart once more.    
  
For the slightest thing can tip it, that coin on its edge, making it fall on a face once again, crushing one side and leaving the other gasping for breath.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Richard Siken's Crush: "This is the repeated image of the lover destroyed", which this was inspired by.


End file.
